Just because a particular technology is new and hyped, doesn’t necessarily mean its the right immediate investment for your recruiting or staffing agency.

Despite the hype, mobile technology isn’t necessarily something that should simply be tossed into your recruiting or staffing processes. This is not to say that mobile has no place – and is not a valuable tool – only that you must first have specific goals and objectives for what it is you are trying to accomplish by going mobile. Otherwise, this technology may become little more than just an expensive toy.

(For a consumer oriented example, think back to the Segway. If the company had goals that were more clearly defined than – ‘be the next evolution in human transportation’ – many of us may be riding one today.)

To ensure any decision you make involving mobile is based purely on what it can help to do for your agency, here are three specific tactics mobile can help you with almost immediately after implementation. My advice is to determine if these tactics will be beneficial to your agency, to think of more and similar tactics like these – and to develop a plan for launching these tactics – even before you finalize a plan to fully integrate mobile technology:

1. Launch a mobile friendly website: Since smartphones are already incredibly popular and will in all likelihood continue to gain in popularity in the future, why not capitalize on the trend? Develop a mobile website targeted at recruiting people who own smartphones – typically the younger and more tech-savvy crowd. Make sure you’re equipped with staffing and recruiting software with the ability to capture and organize QR codes, so you can easily create a database of contacts for follow-up.

2. Conduct automated interviews. Some companies are going as far as to conduct interviews via smartphones and tablet PCs. Commonly, these companies will use their recruiting software to record several questions, developed especially for high-volume recruiting efforts. Although it may be faster in screening out who might be less desirable candidates, note that an automated process may not be a complete substitute for interviews via phone or in-person. What if a highly qualified applicant doesn’t understand a question? Miscommunications are easily cleared up by in-person discussions.

3. Add a candidate self-scheduling function. Self-scheduling is undoubtedly a task which would enhance workplace productivity. Applicants could simply browse an animated calendar and add themselves to the schedule. Remember how many e-mails and how much frustration is sometimes spent working out a mutually agreeable interview time with some candidates? Eliminate that lost time and added stress with staffing and recruiting software that allows for candidate self-scheduling.

You may or may not choose to use mobile technology in some of the ways discussed. But, the methodology for any tactic you choose to implement (like the tactics above) – should be based on a plan first, and technology second.